


The Dead Must Have Their Tribute

by HazelGatoya



Series: Dimitri Will Live on the Golden Deer Route if I Have to Drag Him to Redemption Kicking and Screaming [2]
Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Dimitri would be a terrifying ghost guys, F/M, Felix was not in Fhirdiad for the great assassination incident, Hurt/Comfort, Nightmares, Petra continues to be supportive, Smack dab in the middle of the timeskip, So much headcanon, THREE HOUSES LET US SEE BRIGID, There's some guilt there, We gone Golden Deer, Well until you do I will just describe it myself
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-30
Updated: 2019-09-30
Packaged: 2020-11-08 13:17:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,737
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20836106
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HazelGatoya/pseuds/HazelGatoya
Summary: Felix has a nightmare of those he refuses to think that he's failed. Petra is there to comfort him in these trying times. Takes place during chapter two of "A Dance of Wind and Sky."





	The Dead Must Have Their Tribute

**Author's Note:**

> For the Autumn Promptest on Wattpad. Golden Deer Post-Timeskip Spoilers. I am working on chapter two of "A Dance of Wind and Sky" but it's a) going to be long, and b) this scene is too specific and in-depth for the style of that particular fic. SO it's separate. And I hope you enjoy it. :)

There was a choking stench of blood in the air. Felix shivered in it all, on his knees in the stained grass. There was red on his hands and on his pants as well. He barely managed to swallow back his bile, looking out over his home.

Fhirdiad was ruined, ransacked, demonic beasts with those horrible, stupid masks crashing into houses and ruining it further. The hazy person among them shifted from a young woman with long white hair to an older woman with white skin and three wagging tails, to a somber figure with a mask of red and white and feathers arching out of a black cloak, to a mage with pale white, sagging skin and black robes crouched cackling over the dead.

The dead... 

"Why do you kneel?"

Felix froze. The voice was soft, young, but it was still _his._ Against his will, his head turned. 

Prince Dimitri stood over him- thankfully clear of any blood except for what was on his hands. His hair was longer than he'd kept it at the academy, back when... back when... "Why are you kneeling?" Dimitri insisted, blue eyes scrunched up in anguish. "They're still attacking. They've taken everyone, the..."

"I'm not you." Felix hadn't realized he was hyperventilating, he shot to his feet, nearly tripping in his hurry to get away. "Be... be... bego--"

"You would throw me aside again?" Dimitri hissed, expression morphing from pain to rage in an instant, and he approached, still in the accursed body of a child. "I understand why you hate _me,_ but did they really deserve this?" Dimitri waved his hand towards bodies that Felix forced himself not to look at. "Annette, Gustave, your own _father?_ Abandoned simply because you could no longer look at me?"

"I... owe... you..."

"The dead must have their tribute." All anger cleared from the child's face, and he smiled ever-so-prettily up at Felix, reaching up with his bloodstained hands.

Hands that had crushed a man's skull.

Hands that could hold a woman's gently at a ball in a distant past. 

Hands that gripped a relic weapon likely until the very end.

"I owe you no-- I hate--"

"Shh, you'll never finish that sentence." The smile remained, a child's expression on a beast's face. "You know you could never get rid of me, Felix." Dimitri's small hands curled around his tunic, and he grew more serious. "I can't avenge them. It's up to you. The dead must have their tribute."

"The gravestones you slung around your neck are not mine to bear!" Felix cried, managing to move, grip the child's wrists. _Throw him off. Throw him off. He's gone, he's dead, he--_

"Kill them for me," Dimitri begged, his blue eyes wide. "Take her head and hang it from the gates of Enbarr."

"I'm not you--!" Felix sobbed, the bile rising in his throat again.

"Felix," he pleaded, his hands wrapping around Felix's wrists. "_Felix--_"

_Felix!_

Felix thrashed his way right out of Fhirdiad, into a bundle of blankets, and was barely stopped from falling onto the floor of a room by a strong grip on his wrists. "Let-- off--"

"Felix, you are panicking."

A heavily accented voice cut through the haze, and he froze. The grip on his wrists vanished, and then there was a presence carefully moving onto the bed with him, even though... he couldn't hear her moving over his heavy pants. "I will not harm you, you know this. I am going to be hugging you."

He stiffened as arms wrapped around him, shivering as a hand brought his head down to her chest. He had seen hands snap necks before, crush... he could hear her heartbeat thrumming softly beneath her skin, like a bird. "Breathe with me, Felix," she commanded in Brigin rather than Fodlanese, quietly running her hand through his dark blue hair. "Whatever you saw or felt was not real."

He gulped in air for another minute, but he could hear her breathing beneath him. "I... I need to move, Petra," he croaked.

"You are shaking far too badly for that," she replied firmly, continuing to stroke his hair. "You could not even lift a sword in your current condition."

That bad, huh?

Felix closed his eyes, concentrating on his breathing and curling closer to Petra, clutching to what little clothing she was wearing. She must have run here in her nightclothes, not that the people of Brigid wore nearly as much clothing as the people of Fodlan anyways. "...How loudly was I shouting?" he asked, sticking to Fodlanese. She could understand him when he spoke it and he butchered the poor Brigen language even on his good days. This was not shaping up to be a good day. 

"Very," she replied. "We thought you were being attacked, but then I came in and saw that the spirit of nightmares had come to pay you a visit." He huffed a small sigh. He could feel the tremors running through his body now. "I have never seen you so rattled."

"...Does your spirit of nightmares often take the faces of the fallen?"

Her hand paused on his hair for a moment. "Wicked spirit. It often does for me," she murmured back. "You dreamed of Fhirdiad."

"Stupid," he muttered. "I wasn't there when it happened and so much was wrong. It was just a dream, obviously a dream, I shouldn't have--"

"Breathe, Felix."

They were silent for a moment, Felix falling silent under the tone of command in her voice. He focused on matching his breathing with hers, he had heard of this before. He had just never had anyone to test it out with whenever he desperately needed to breathe... so he had just learned to do it on his own. "The boar," he murmured after his breathing had slowed a bit, along with his heart rate. "The boar prince bade me to avenge those who died in Fhirdiad."

"In person?"

"In person." He lifted his head, and she disentangled from him so that they were both just sitting on the bed. "It was... disturbing, is all. I didn't expect the first ghost to be him."

"You are shaking far less now." She took his hand, and he flinched slightly, but let her pull him up from the bed. "Who did you expect it to be, if you don't mind me asking?"

Felix exhaled slowly, quietly, focusing on the wooden floor beneath their bare feet. They were silent as they moved through the halls of the home of the King of Brigid, both of them knowing full well how to quiet their steps. "Glenn. My father. Perhaps Sylvain? I'm not certain." He glanced up and immediately wished he hadn't. The understanding in her large violet eyes felt like a knife to his chest. "Just not him."

Petra looked away as they walked outside into the cool breeze, up toward a sky full of stars that stretched above the colored tips of the leaves on the many trees of this island. The light gave her completely loose magenta hair and her browned skin a silver tint. "Claude's condolences for the events in Faerghus came tonight," she told him, voice quiet. Ah. "I dreamed of our days in the Academy after I read it." _Before being awoken by shouting_, was unsaid, but there. "It is difficult knowing that those I shared meals with- Dorothea, Caspar, Ferdinand... all of them, with Edelgard and Hubert at their head, are bringing so much pain to Fodlan."

"It is war, and it's stink has been crawling up from the ground for my entire life," Felix growled, shoving his hair out of his face. "The entire country knew it was coming, we were all just in denial. I just... never imagined that the Kingdom would be so decimated. Nor that Dimitri would fall to assassins like his father before him, he was..." His breath stuttered again.

"You thought he would die charging towards Edelgard, screaming for her head." Petra closed her eyes. "Claude also warned that Edelgard's armies have tried coming towards Brigid since I have not joined her." She opened her eyes. "But she has Fodlan to worry about first, so she will not be sending her full might here."

"Claude..." Their former house leader was likely the head of the Leicester Alliance now. "What other news did he have?"

"His people are squabbling constantly." Petra shook her head. "Some have willingly joined the Empire, others strike out in anger, and the fighting continues on." She looked at him. "He also asked, if we are willing, to be ready for the class reunion."

Felix blinked. "He still thinks that's a good idea, despite the Millenium Festival being cancelled and our professor being dead?"

"Claude is... strange." She smiled, turning to him. "But in a good way. I would not object to going back to Fodlan and likely gathering for a strong stand against Edelgard. Have we not all separated and grown stronger after we fought together as one class?"

"You would be willing to strike against Edelgard? Most of your class-"

"I am as much a Black Eagle as you are a Blue Lion, Felix," she interrupted gently. "Did we not decide to walk this path together?"

He tsked softly, but could not help but give a small smile. "We did," he replied. "Back in Fhirdiad. Forgive me for questioning you."

"Good, you understand." She grinned, placing her hands on his bare shoulders. "Now, will you share a dance with me? The night is beautiful and I know that both of us are now far too restless to sleep."

Felix took one of her hands, backing off just a bit. "We truly are going back to our Academy days." He lifted her hand to his lips for a brief kiss. "But yes, I would be delighted to share a dance with you, just... somewhere more private." He knew why she had suggested it after all, and was grateful for it.

The boar prince and his father would likely be waiting for them and doing all the steps as Felix tried to dance them right out of his head. He'd deal with the ghosts later, just... not tonight. He was _not _slinging gravestones around his neck.

He already had so many gravestones lined up and waiting to be plucked from the ground... and he had a sinking feeling that there were only more to add.


End file.
